Kansas senator Bob Dole’s recent attack on popular culture has garnered largely favorable responses despite his blatantly political motivations (the man would give his good arm to be President) and numerous proclamations that were utterly nonsensical (if Dole thinks the bloody Arnold Schwarzenegger flick True Lies is “family friendly,” as…
Boulder-based singer-songwriter Dave Gershen isn’t shy about making grandiloquent statements. For instance, he says, “A couple of years ago, I had a spiritual awakening. I realized that it was time–that I was sitting on a gift that was too strong, too much a part of me, not to be sharing…
With KTCL, the Peak and what’s left of KBCO all attempting to bend the ears of listeners who went to college during the early Eighties (and apparently lost their taste for musical adventure immediately thereafter), Denver’s airwaves hang heavy with the work of artists who came to prominence when Ronald…
Truman’s Water Milktrain to Paydirt (Homestead) You can’t describe Truman’s Water as just another punk band–not when the closest thing to an influence you can scratch out of cuts like “Unitraction Bath” is Captain Beefheart. Most of these songs include a modicum of structure (even the ones that dissolve into…
“I think people will enjoy our music most when they’re on their third beer,” says Matt Squires, bassist for Denver’s dream popsters Gray Parade. “When they’re just kind of settling down and getting comfortable.” “Yeah,” adds guitarist Joel Richardson, “when the couch starts to swallow them up and they don’t…
Johnny Rzeznik, vocalist/guitarist for the Goo Goo Dolls, describes his reaction to A Boy Named Goo, his group’s latest excursion into power pop, with characteristic candor. “I like it more than I thought I would,” he says. “I always hate everything I do. After a while, I listen to it…
Even if multi-instrumentalist John Hartford found a cure for cancer, the discovery would probably be overshadowed by what the public sees as an even greater achievement–his writing of “Gentle on My Mind,” a hit for Glen Campbell in 1968. But it’s been almost thirty years since Hartford, looking soulful and…
The image that’s long defined Peter Murphy simply does not exist anymore–if it ever did. The former frontman for England’s Bauhaus (the standard-bearer for the early Eighties gothic movement), Murphy has a reputation as a pretentious vampire wannabe preying on legions of ever-younger enthusiasts, but his activities of late belie…
David Yow tried everything. The lead singer for the Jesus Lizard, second on the lineup at the Lollapalooza Festival (which stopped at Fiddler’s Green on July 8), jumped into the crowd and berated several people in his path from a distance of approximately two millimeters. He kneeled at the edge…
Gangsta-rap performers who’ve led lives of crime have a leg up in the street credibility game. Snoop Doggy Dogg (soon to be tried for murder) and Tupac Shakur (in stir for offenses including sexual assault) have ridden their recent fights with the law to sales nirvana, while reportedly reformed bad…
Ask bassist/vocalist Myke Spy of Denver’s Harriet the Spy to elaborate on his band’s music and you won’t get a single reply. Instead, you’ll get a whole series of them. Reply number one: “I like Jean-Luc Godard. I want our music to be like one long version of Breathless. It’s…
Bassist David Sims has no idea where his act, the Jesus Lizard, fits in with the rest of this year’s Lollapalooza main-stagers. “We’re certainly not the headliner,” he notes. “And I don’t know if I could convince you we’re one of the girl bands or one of the rap groups…
A generation of English blues rockers, including Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, John Mayall, Mick Jagger and Jimmy Page, have acknowledged that guitarist/vocalist Otis Rush has provided them with divine musical inspiration. But Rush, who’s 61, is not the type to crow about the influence he’s had on so many stars…
Perez Prado Mondo Mambo! The Best of Perez Prado and His Orchestra (RCA/Rhino) Various Artists Mambo Mania! The Kings & Queens of Mambo (Rhino) At its best, the mambo, a boisterous style of Latin dance music, is absolutely hysterical. Trumpets don’t just sound: They blare in unison–and instead of trailing…
Deborah Henson-Conant, Friday, June 23, at Swallow Hill Music Hall, is a jazz virtuoso and superior improviser with an unlikely specialty–the 47-string grand concert harp. A native Californian now based in New England, she first learned about the harp’s limitless possibilities when she was hired to play a three-hour restaurant…
If you’re wondering why Austin-based vocalist/multi-instrumentalist K. (for Kathy) McCarty has won the hearts of so many music journalists, bend an ear to her list of favorite artists. “Richard Thompson,” she says. “I’ve been listening to him pretty much nonstop since 1985. And Randy Newman is another hero of mine,…
A local high school boy who’s seen “…kiss,” a video that’s been popping up late at night on MTV, has kind words for its singer, Pussy Tourette. She’s pretty cool, he says, and not bad-looking. And, he adds, she “has a nice bod. Real muscular for a chick, ya know?”…
Cassandra Wilson is a big fan of Cassandra Wilson. When asked how she’s able to appeal to both Kenny G listeners and the Ornette Coleman followers who despise Bill Clinton’s favorite saxophonist, Wilson, a woman who’s infused the jazz-vocal tradition with more life than any other young performer to emerge…
If you put a typical CU student at the front of a successful hippie/funk/R&B band and allowed that person to see nothing but an endless road filled with multicolored Volkswagens, to wear nothing but tie-dyed T-shirts and to hear nothing but the Allman Brothers for almost half a decade, he…
The Apples Fun Trick Noisemaker (spinART) Last year, Apples frontman Robert Schneider told Westword he wanted to write “uplifting” songs that had a “transcendent quality” about them. Judging from Fun Trick Noisemaker, the act’s spinART debut, Schneider and the rest of the Apples (drummer Hilarie Sidney, guitarist John Hill and…
“Because I’ve been in King Crimson and Yes and Genesis,” says Bill Bruford, among the planet’s best-known drummers, “I always get the stuff about British progressive rock–which is not a subject dear to my heart. It’s a term that journalists invented, but we musicians don’t really acknowledge those particular categories…
For most music aficionados, the terms “punk” and “folk” exist at opposite ends of the musical spectrum. But for self-described punk folksinger Ani DiFranco, the two genres are practically one and the same. “In my mind, they aren’t all that different,” insists the 24-year-old New Yorker. “I mean, the whole…
